Public Lecture: Dark Energy & Cosmic Acceleration

This lecture will be offered in a hybrid format, is open to all, and is recommended for adults and students in 9th grade and above.

Title: Cosmology in Overdrive: Chasing Cosmic Acceleration with Galaxies

Speaker: Dr. Agnès Ferté (SLAC/KIPAC)

Abstract: Nearly 30 years after the discovery of cosmic acceleration, its origin remains the source of open questions: is it caused by dark energy, a mysterious energy causing the Universe’s expansion to go faster and faster with time? Or was Einstein’s theory of gravity wrong? Cosmology is now at a turning point: tensions between different measurements are appearing, and a deluge of data from new ambitious experiments will come over the coming decade. In this talk, I will discuss how imaging galaxies is key to addressing these questions and present where cosmology stands today: at the crossroads between the completion of current galaxy surveys, such as the Dark Energy Survey (DES), which imaged hundreds of millions of galaxies, and the next generation of observatories, such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which will image billions. I will also highlight the final cosmological results from DES, particularly those related to the possible time dependence of dark energy, describe the promise of the Rubin Observatory, and discuss how this new era of data—along with the rise of artificial intelligence—will help us characterize the expansion history of the Universe and test gravity on the largest scales with unprecedented precision.

The livestream URL can be found at the bottom of the EventBrite registration confirmation email.

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